An article about how South Florida cities realized they can't get people to get out of their cars if you make it easy to drive cars. So they are deliberately planning tremendous density around existing vehicle congested areas with zero relief for drivers. Choosing to make driving so horrible to induce people to walk, bike, or take transit.

Miami-area officials are saying yes to plenty of development in already heavily-congested areas, regardless of the traffic consequences. In fact, the paper found, “Instead of fixing the [traffic] problem, government officials are deliberately adding to it in hopes we’ll all walk, ride the bus or take the train.”

I have first hand experience in peak season SW Florida over many years. It is absolutely astonishing how bad FL traffic gets, and you still see nary a single person walking or biking except a few who bike to and from the beach (one of few places where parking is limited). I am convinced there is no traffic too bad for Florida types to get out of their cars. Parking, on the other hand, is another question.

Because people have short memories, the "just fine" that existed after the 35W bridge collapse involved significant changes to the existing infrastructure, major tie-ups and road delays that rippled across the city, and people dramatically changing their commuting patterns, often with meaningful impacts to their non-commuting lives.

It's true that people did not queue up in a year long traffic jam waiting for the bridge to reopen.

MNdible wrote:Because people have short memories, the "just fine" that existed after the 35W bridge collapse involved significant changes to the existing infrastructure, major tie-ups and road delays that rippled across the city, and people dramatically changing their commuting patterns, often with meaningful impacts to their non-commuting lives.

It's true that people did not queue up in a year long traffic jam waiting for the bridge to reopen.

I know it's anecdata but I drove that stretch of 94 every day and did not experience much disruption. I'm sure individual experiences of severe disruption also exist. But I have a hard time saying it was a huge mess overall.

Has anybody else looked out the window, saw birds fly, then wished you could fly, then thought of helicopters, then drones were a big thing all of a sudden, then thought of something like a personal backpack drone that could fly you places like the crow flies?

Going to pile on, but I also did not feel there was much disruption after the first week or two when the 35W bridge collapsed. And I lived in Marcy Holmes and commuted to Chanhassen, so I definitely would have felt the ripples on any of the freeways west of the river. Because I was incredibly OCD about tracking travel times, I had a log of all the different ways I would take to get to/from work to minimize trip time (seriously, I would try taking 494, 169, or 100 to 394, and either go through downtown [to either the East Bank via Washington Ave or up across Central Ave to get to University Ave] or 94-35W-Washington Ave/Univ pre-collapse. I also tried 494/62 to 35W through S Mpls. I did these a lot before the bridge collapsed and then for the duration of the new bridge construction). My commute varied day by day, but on average each of those routes had a few minutes added to it.

And, hey, I don't need to rely on my own personal experience (which is still pretty substantial considering I lived right there). MnDOT sez that the 135,000 cars that used the bridge experienced $240,000 daily time-loss due to detour delays, or $1.77 per car - or about 5-6 minutes using MnDOT's value of time. And those values were calculated for travel time prior to MnDOT making improvements to detour routes. Obviously the law of averages says some people were impacted more than others, but honestly it was "mostly fine."